Unfortunately Yours: A Novel (Vine Mess Book 2)

A boom of thunder jolted Natalie’s entire body upright in bed, August’s heavy arm dropping from around her shoulders down into the sheets. Within seconds, that muscular limb was curling around her thigh, hoarse, unintelligible murmurs coming from her husband. No doubt about it, the man was beautiful when he slept. A big, cozy brute with obvious morning wood. She’d expect nothing less—

Another roll of thunder seemed to shake the entire house. With a gasp, her gaze flew to the window. The storm sounded like it was coming from their backyard. Her distress must have finally woken August because he sat up beside her in bed, bare chested, his brow chiseled with concern. Instantly on alert.

After a quick glance at the window, he studied her face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad storm,” he said, pushing a set of fingers through his bedhead. “We might be stuck in here all day.” That same hand disappeared beneath the comforter and she knew exactly what he was doing under there. The flex of his forearm muscles gave him away. “Can’t think of a single thing we might do to occupy ourselves. Can you?”

A little over a week ago, she would have taken an immediate jab at him. Claim she was calling the police to request immediate evacuation. Or ask in mock horror if they’d be forced to drink his wine if they ran out of rations. But now, she simply turned wet, already starved for August’s weight on top of her, the friction their warm morning skin would make as he moved. Slow at first. Then hard. Then fast and ferocious.

They would talk after that.

They had to talk.

Either they stopped ending up in bed like this, acting like a real-life married couple or . . .

Or they adjusted their plan from one month to . . . longer?

A goose egg stuck in her throat. Dear Lord, the very idea was scary.

What if she actually tried to make it work with this man who she had deep, messy feelings for? What if they remained married permanently? It would require a lot of shifting. Her expectations and aspirations and . . . well, everything. She’d have to reimburse Claudia for all of her time and hard work, make sure her friend wasn’t left hanging. She’d have to find . . . a purpose here. The financial sector didn’t operate out of Napa. Wine was her only option and so far, August had only thrown up roadblocks to prevent her from helping.

He hadn’t yet carved out a place for her in his daily life. Starting each morning, he’d shut her out while he worked, instead of accepting her help. Letting her in.

Perhaps his rejection was unconscious, but he did it nonetheless. Explaining her reservations to August would only force him to make changes too soon and she couldn’t fast-forward his grief process. But could she gamble her entire future on him letting her in eventually? What if he didn’t and she signed up for another life like the one in which she’d been raised? Always being kept on the periphery of the Vos family, never let into the inner circle.

August leaned over, skating his mouth over hers. Urging her down into the sheets and coming down on top of her, licking into a moaning kiss that shot bullet holes through her worries. “Woke up starved for that thing between your legs.” He groaned into her neck. “Not sure if you’re still a little pissed from last night, so I’m asking very nicely if I can eat it.”

She really should give him another purple nurple for referring to her vagina as that thing. Unfortunately, she liked all the words coming from his mouth and wanted more. Immediately. “Yes,” she murmured, letting her knees fall open while his mouth trailed eagerly downward—

Natalie’s phone rang on her bedside table.

“No,” August wailed. Directly against her sex. “Please God, no.”

There was no way to trap the giggle. Any other time, she would have ignored the call, but she happened to glance over and see Julian’s name on the screen. Her brother wouldn’t pick up a phone unless there was a good reason. She had to answer.

“Sorry, it’s my brother,” she said, pushing her fingers through her husband’s hair. When August admitted defeat and rolled over, misery etched in every line of his face, she finally picked up her phone and hit talk. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” came her brother’s voice from the other end.

“Julian, hey—”

“Are you watching the news?”

“What?” she pulled away from the phone momentarily to check the time. Nine A.M. “No, I just woke up. Is something happening?”

“Yes. Is August there? He’s not answering his phone.”

Natalie frowned, a weird sort of clinch happening in her middle. “He’s here. I’ll put you on speaker.” She tapped the screen. “Okay, you’ve got both of us.”

“There’s been a flash flood in St. Helena,” said Julian, without preamble. Brisk, as usual, but slightly choppy. “There’s helicopter footage on the news. A whole road turned into a river and there’s a minivan stuck in the middle of it.” He paused. “Kids and a mom.”

“Oh my God,” Natalie breathed, tossing aside the sheets, her feet finding the cold floor.

“Search and rescue are dealing with similar situations all over the region. They’re bringing in reserves from other counties, but the roads are causing delays. The police are at the scene, but their first attempt to reach the van wasn’t successful—”

August pulled up his pants and disappeared from the bedroom.

Just boom. Gone.

His feet pounded across the floorboards of the kitchen. The creak of a door opening and closing in the hallway, a distinct click she recognized as the linen closet. Was he taking a shower? Or was that wishful thinking? Because she had the sudden fear that her fake-for-now husband was heading straight to a flash flood.

“He’s . . . I don’t know what he’s doing. Hold on.” With Julian still on speakerphone, Natalie jogged from the bedroom with her stupid heart lodged in her throat. “August?”

She found him in the hallway. But this man was a stranger.

Gone was his golden retriever, tongue lolling out, lazy beers at the lake kind of demeanor. He’d been replaced with a soldier. His expression was hard, focused, the movements of his hands precise and efficient. And from somewhere in the linen closet she’d opened multiple times, he’d unearthed a gigantic backpack. He checked the contents now, nodded, threw it on his back, and strode for the door.

“You’re going?” Natalie moved like a ghost in his wake. “You’re going.”

“I’m going,” August said without stopping.

“He’s going,” Julian echoed, sounding relieved.

Relieved? Natalie felt like someone had shoved a stick of dynamite into her chest. Her feet were barely functioning, but she ran after August, anyway, barefoot in a nightshirt. Outside. Within seconds, she was soaked to the skin. So was August, though he seemed almost at home in the rain, cutting through it like some kind of deadly assassin in sweatpants and no shirt.

He was going to help the family stuck in the flash flood.

Just like that.

Her heart was torn in two directions. Obviously, she wanted those children and their mother to be rescued, but she’d seen what nature was capable of four years ago during the fire. Floods were dangerous. He was one man—not a team of SEALs.

Was he going to be all right?

Natalie hung up on Julian, blood pounding in her temples. She watched August climb into the driver’s seat of his truck and didn’t even hesitate before springing to the passenger side and throwing herself into the vehicle.

“Out,” he barked, pointing at the house, intimidating her for the first time ever in their entire acquaintance. But not enough to send her out of the truck to watch him drive off into the storm from hell.

“No. I’m coming. I can’t just sit here w-wondering if you’re okay.” Warm, salty moisture splashed down her cheeks, like a cartoon version of crying, and she batted the tears away with shaky fingers. “Don’t make me do that. Please.”

“Natalie . . .” He shook his head, rested two fists on the steering wheel. “If it comes down to rescuing you or literally anyone else in this fucking world, it’s going to be you. I’ll be focused on you. I won’t be able to think about anything else.”

“I will be fine. I will make sure I’m fine.” She put on her seat belt with difficulty, because her fingers were going numb. “We’re wasting time.”

A beat passed.

With a curse, he gunned the truck in reverse and shot down the tree-lined driveway while her heart pumped in time with the windshield wipers.

*  *  *

It was so much worse than she’d imagined, and she’d been picturing the apocalypse. No fewer than two dozen emergency personnel vehicles were parked at haphazard angles along the road leading to the flooded street. A helicopter circled overhead. The occupants of news vans were fighting with police officers to gain entry to the cordoned-off scene. And all the while, the deluge continued to pour, thunder and lightning arguing with each other in a way that suggested they were in the thick of this storm.

August screeched the truck to a halt at the police barrier, the window already rolled halfway down. “Petty Officer Cates, formerly of SEAL team five. I can help.”

They waved him through and he hit the gas.

“H-how exactly are you going to help? Do you have a plan?”

“Nope.”

“Fuck oh fuck oh fuck.”

“I’m trained in swift water rescue, but I need to assess the situation up close from the ground level. See what kind of landscape and manpower I’m working with. And then I’ll have a plan.” He hit the brakes and threw the truck into park. “Your plan, Natalie, is to stay in this truck or so help me God, it will be the worst fight we’ve ever had,” he ended on a shout.

“I’m not scared of a fight,” she shouted back. “I’m scared you’ll get hurt.”

August took a long look at her face, seeming to register her terror for the first time. How polite of him. And he momentarily softened, cupping the side of her face. “I’m adding it to my wedding vows. I won’t get hurt. It’s written in stone now, just like the rest of them.” He kissed her hard and took one last look at her face. “My God, I am fucking crazy about you.”

With that, he shot from the truck with the backpack over one shoulder, leaving her reeling, her heart bleeding profusely. But instinct kicked in a second later and Natalie moved into the warm spot left behind by his body, watching him through the windshield, the scrape of the wiper blades suddenly becoming the soundtrack to a horror film. He shouted at a group of huddled men, joined them. After a brief exchange, they moved as one big unit toward the top of the road—and that’s when their location finally registered.

She’d taken this shortcut a million times throughout her life. When town was jam-packed with tourist traffic, this road was a way to avoid it. Elevation wise, she supposed it was much lower than the surrounding area, but that fact had never seemed important until now.

Up ahead, August disappeared around a bend in the road with the huddle of rescue workers and without her husband in view, everything inside her screamed to throw herself out of the truck and sprint after him. But she would not distract him in a dangerous scenario like this. Absolutely not. If he made a mistake and got hurt or killed because of her, she would never forgive herself. She was staying in the damn truck.

But there was no one around to stop the truck from creeping forward a little.

Just so she could keep tabs on any developments.

August had left the motor running, so she put the truck into drive and inched slowly around the police vehicles and their flashing lights, stopping when the very top of the rushing water came into view below.

And her blood ran cold.

The van was halfway submerged in turbulent water.

Teri Frasier, Zelnick Cellar’s one and only customer, and her triplets were holding on to one another for dear life on the roof of the van.

For the first time, she noticed a man on the scene with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, wearing what looked to be a sodden suit. His hysterical tone reached through the rain and windshield and though the voice was muffled, Natalie somehow knew it was Teri’s husband. Helpless, watching the water slowly rise around his family.

“Oh no. Oh no.” A chill rent through Natalie, making her shiver even harder than before. Her rickety breaths were causing the windshield to fog up so she turned on the defroster, retreating into the seat and pulling up her knees to her chest. “Please, please, please, August. Get them. Get them and be okay. Please.”

A few minutes later, a yellow raft approached from upstream and there was August, steering it, two officers behind him. They’d put August in a helmet, but the life vest was obviously too small for his king-sized body, so it just hung on him loosely, flapping open in the wind. He shouted something at Teri, smiled, and she nodded.

“I love you,” Natalie whispered. “I love you. Come on. Please.”

The timing was barbaric. Why did she have to realize she loved the big lug right before he was about to do something life threatening? It couldn’t have happened while he was cooking eggs or trying to reason with the cat? Natalie was never more positive that she hadn’t loved Morrison, because this big, wild, terrifying feeling had happened only once in her life.

Right now. For August.

She understood now. Love turned the heart into a liability. If something happened to him, she’d never get the damn thing to beat properly again. It seemed to be beating for him now.

Time seemed to freeze when August reached the side of the submerged road. From his backpack, he pulled out what looked like . . . a grappling hook? He raised it high and buried it in the dirt and rock formation that ran along the road, twisting and screwing it into the earth. One of the officers leapt out of the raft onto the rocks and worked to secure it further, wrapping the attached cable around his forearm several times. August threw the excess cable to the other side of the road, where a waiting officer caught it, securing a latch to the front of his vehicle.

As soon as the man turned and gave August a thumbs-up, he jumped into the raging current of water and Natalie almost puked.

It carried him several feet toward the submerged van and she started to cry, the heels of her hands digging into the hollows of her cheeks. Hard enough to hurt. But her breath caught as August stopped suddenly and Natalie realized he’d hooked himself to the center of the cable that ran perpendicular to the road.

“Okay,” she breathed, shaking uncontrollably. “Is that okay? Is that good?”

No one was there to hear her nonsensical questions. Or hear her chant her husband’s name over and over again, her fingernails digging into her knees, the seat. The fact that the truck smelled so heavily of grapefruit wasn’t helping. Or was it the only thing helping? She didn’t know. She could only hold her breath as August moved toward the minivan, instructing Teri and the three children to climb onto the hood of the van, which was partially beneath water.

The woman hesitated, visibly nervous to step into the water at all, but whatever August said seemed to reassure her and finally, she stepped in, handing the first of the three children to him. He took off his life jacket and wrapped the small child as tightly as possible with the belt, then he put the young boy on his back and started moving toward the side of the road by pulling himself along the cable, hand over hand. Natalie could see he was talking to the crying child and more than anything, she wondered what he was saying. Probably just the best things in the world, because he was August freaking Cates.

When the child was reunited with his father, Natalie expelled a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, her heart still fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.

“What the hell. I’m married to, like, Captain America or something.” She sniffed, the scene blurring in front of her. “I can’t watch this three more times. I can’t.”

But she did.

By the time it was Teri’s turn to hop on his back, the woman no longer looked worried. Her kids were out of danger.

And then it was over. The rain continued to come down in buckets, but it was over.

At which point, nothing short of an act of God could keep Natalie in the truck.